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2017 Public Webinar Schedule

The following webinars are free and open to the public. Presentations are geared toward a lay audience. Dates and topics may be subject to change, please sign up for email updates via the form provided at the bottom of this page.

Date

Topic

Thursday, January 26, 2017, 11 AM EST

An Overview of CSHub Buildings-Related Research
This webinar offers an overview of the CSHub's buildings-related research, including discussion of CSHub studies on life cycle assessment; life cycle cost analysis (with hazard resistance); building energy consumption; and city energy consumption.

An Overview of CSHub Pavements-Related Research
Pavements-related research by the MIT CSHub focuses on improving structure and design, which can lead to increased fuel efficiency, lower maintenance costs, and better life cycle planning. Topics discussed will include life cycle assessment (LCA); life cycle cost analysis (LCCA); and Pavement vehicle interaction (PVI).

Pavement Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA): Price Projection Modeling
Life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) enables engineers, designers, and decision makers to better understand the economic impacts of infrastructure decisions over time and identifies opportunities to reduce impacts. This webinar will present CSHub pavements LCCA research, including a study conducted in collaboration with the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) that showed material-specific price projections are more accurate than the conventional assumption that pavement prices follow the average rate of economic inflation.

Building Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA), With Hazard Resistance
This webinar presents a building life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) approach developed by CSHub researchers that combines initial construction costs with several types of operational costs, including costs associated with energy consumption and repairs due to damage from hazards.

Pavement Vehicle Interaction (PVI): Design and Maintenance
Pavement vehicle interaction (PVI), an examination of the interaction between a vehicle’s tires and the roadway surface on which it is driving, leads to excess fuel consumption (EFC) and, as a result, smog and greenhouse gas emissions. This impacts drivers, states, and municipalities financially. This webinar will present CSHub research which has led to models that quantify excess fuel consumption due to PVI for pavement segments and pavement networks.

Building Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
To understand the full environmental impact of a structure over decades of use, all phases, starting before construction and continuing through demolition, must be considered. Life cycle assessment (LCA) seeks to quantify environmental impacts over the infrastructure life cycle by identifying the costs during each phase. This webinar will present a detailed look at CSHub research on this topic.

Albedo & Urban Energy Consumption
Rapid urbanization has changed land use and surface properties, this has an effect on climate regionally and even globally. CSHub researchers are studying the impact of these changes and investigating ways to make cities more energy efficient. Topics discussed in this webinar will include albedo (a measure of the fraction of solar energy reflected by the Earth’s surface) and urban heat island (a temperature difference between urban areas and their rural surroundings where the city temperature is higher).